Fade transition effects are frequently used to transit from one scene to another. For example, in a video clip (or a motion picture), one scene may fade out through a number of frames to become a picture of a solid color (e.g., black); and, another scene may then fade in from the solid color after a number of frames. Fade effects provide a smooth transition from one scene to another, avoiding abrupt scene changes.
Fade effects are often inserted in video and film media as part of the editing process. A number of frames are generated or modified such that the playback of these frames shows the fade effect. Thus, the fade effect becomes part of the media content after the editing, immutably mixed in with other elements of the media content.
A few games have tried to generate video fade effects in real time, in which a function is called repeatedly to adjust the display gamma table for gamma correction (or a fade interface such as DrawSprocket) in order to produce a fade effect. Such an approach requires a significant effort on the part of the game programmer to coordinate the generation of content and the generation of fade effects. Further, these games iterate over a set of fixed steps without regard to elapsed time.